


find that i'm missing every beat of your heart

by iwillshutup



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillshutup/pseuds/iwillshutup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s so clear to him how those two best friends love each other he just can’t understand why they don’t feel like they’re in love with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	find that i'm missing every beat of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> This was written between 1am and 5am. It's unbetaed. I'll probably wake up later today, read it over and realize how awful it is and how the grammar is just terrible and take it down. But right now it's 5:27am and I've been awake for 24 hours. So sorry to everyone who decides to be brave enough to read this.

Isaac is foreign to having friends. He doesn’t know what to do when he sees Erica and Boyd coming back hurt, blood staining their clothes as they wait for their injuries to heal, or when Derek shifts to his wolf form in the middle of his burned house and starts to destroy everything in fits of anger. He doesn’t know how to help people when they’re so obviously messed up. That’s why he tends to stick with Scott.

Scott is probably the least angry person Isaac’s ever met. Scott’s happy and he’s not bitter and even when he’s angry he’s still so not angry and Isaac doesn’t know how to explain it, but it’s just nice. It’s nice not having to worry he’ll say the wrong thing and Scott’s going to break his arm or freeze him out.

He can see when Stiles starts to get frustrated. Isaac’s with Scott all the time and he’s not even ashamed to admit that he’s been following Scott around like a puppy. And Scott indulges him, smiles at him and invites him along even when Stiles clearly wants to spend time alone with Scott.

The thing is Isaac isn’t trying to steal Stiles’ best friend or something equally as childish as that. He’s just trying to fit in, find someone to spend time with. And even if being Scott’s first choice was his intention, he knows he could never even compete with Stiles. Because what Stiles doesn’t realize is just how much he means to Scott. How many times Scott mentions him when he talks to Isaac, how every story he deems worth telling has something to do with Stiles.

And Stiles is so smart, keeping his grades up even when he has to deal with all the supernatural crap he never signed up for, but he’s still so dumb for thinking he’s got to worry about keeping Scott close. Like Scott would ever purposefully do something that could jeopardize their relationship, unless he thought it was for Stiles’ own good.

Actually, they are both stupid. Isaac can’t understand why Scott still thinks he’s so hung up on Allison when she’s clearly not what he needs, she’s not the person that grew up with him, she’s not the one that saw him at his worst and still managed to stick around. He also can’t understand why Stiles thinks he’s so in love with Lydia when she never did anything to deserve it.

It’s so clear to him how those two best friends love each other he just can’t understand why they don’t feel like they’re _in love_ with each other. He knows people have best friends and that’s not the same as having a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but he can’t help but think that if he had that one person that had always been by his side and knew absolutely everything about him, he’d be head over heels for them.

He talks about it to Scott one day. He tells him he’d give everything to have someone that is to him what Stiles is to Scott, not in a jealous I-want-to-have-him kind of way, just in a I-hope-you-realize-how-lucky-you-are way that makes Scott look away and stop to think for a few minutes and then take his phone out to text Stiles, _are you free? We should hang out_.

And just when Scott is leaving the burger joint they met in, Isaac says he doesn’t get it, says that maybe it’s because he isn’t straight, or something, he doesn’t know, maybe it’s because he’s never had a best friend, it’s just that if he had someone like that, he would have tried to make them more than friends because if didn’t work, he would at least know that they tried and they are so close they’d still be best friends even after failing. Scott laughs it off and doesn’t even answer.

Stiles reaches his breaking point one day and corners Isaac in the cafeteria on lunch period. He’s taller than Scott, almost as tall as Derek, and he looks up, straight into Isaac’s eyes and tells him he doesn’t care if Isaac’s got a stupid crush on Scott, he needs to learn how to find some new people to befriend and, hey, don’t you have a pack of leather-wearing misfits to hang out with? Isaac asks him if he wants to go out for some pizza after school.

Despite of the voice in the back of his head telling him that he is, Isaac isn’t trying to play matchmaker. He’s not making plans in his head on what to do to put Stiles and Scott together. He’s just really curious to why neither of them have never really considered being a couple. Objectively, he understands why they wouldn’t try it out, so that’s not the issue. He needs to know how come they never even thought about it.

“I’ve thought about it.” Stiles tells him and Isaac laughs. Because of course Stiles did. Why wouldn’t he? He thinks about everything. “It just doesn’t make sense to keep thinking about it when Scott’s completely straight and we don’t need a relationship to validate our friendship. It wouldn’t change anything beyond the fact that we would want to have sex with each other instead of other people, so I don’t really see why stress it out." 

But it’s not what Isaac means and the sex is not the only thing a relationship would entail. It’s knowing that he would be always in the foreground of the Scott’s mind. It’s seeing each other first thing when they wake up and last thing when they go to bed. It’s not ever having to worry that he’d be left behind, a thought in the back of Scott’s mind, after the wife and the kids and the perfect little Golden Retriever they’d adopt from the pound and, seriously, Stiles, wouldn’t you want to be the one to name that fucking dog? 

Stiles is looking at him like he’s crazy when Isaac stops talking and maybe he is crazy, but he can listen to Stiles’ heart going faster and skipping some beats and he knows he’s onto something. But then Stiles laughs, shakes his head, his heartbeat is normal again, like it never sped up. He tells Isaac he’s been crushing on Lydia since before he knew what a crush was and Scott found his future on Allison. He completely changes the subject and tells Isaac he isn’t so bad after all and he should come around tomorrow to play Call of Duty. He leaves.

Isaac really plans to leave this alone. He does. He spends a lot of time lying on his bed in his foster home trying to heal after a lot of crazy training sessions with Derek, he does all the homework he can bother himself with, studies for his finals and plays a lot of online games with Stiles without even mentioning Scott, he even tries talking to some other people at school – which doesn’t work out because everyone thinks he’s a mental case. 

That’s when Scott shows up at Derek’s house to ask Isaac what the hell did he say to Stiles because he spent his whole childhood trying to get used to Stiles-level craziness and now the craziness has been upped and he doesn’t know how much he can take it. Isaac thinks about lying for a whole second and then tells the truth, not because Scott would be able to tell – Scott is still not that good at that –, but because his subconscious is still telling him he can put these two people together.

It’s not like Isaac hadn’t had a similar conversation with Scott to the one he had with Stiles, but apparently it makes all the difference in the world that Stiles had thought about it, about _them_ , before, when it had never even crossed Scott’s mind until Isaac brought it up, because Isaac is talking about adopting Dalmatians this time, instead of Golden Retrievers, since Scott was gushing about a couple of them during Isaac’s last visit to the vet, and suddenly Scott is turning his back and leaving with his cell phone in hand. Isaac can hear Stiles’ voice on the other end of the line even when Scott’s out of sight.

Finals make everyone a little crazy and really busy. People need to at least pretend they are trying to study so their parents won’t give them such a hard time and Isaac really needs to study because school hasn’t really been a priority since he was turned. He realizes that Scott’s situation is a little worse than his, that the only way Scott can pass Chemistry is if he gets a perfect score on his final and everyone knows that isn’t going to happen.

When the school year is over, Isaac’s GPA apparently doesn’t care that he’s had to help fight a crazy werelizard person and drops like the temperature on winter. It’s not that Isaac expected anything else, but it’s still weird to see his grades and not having to worry about being locked up in a freezer. He knows even though Stiles has managed to help Scott get passing grades on most of his classes, Scott still failed Chemistry and is going to summer school, so he guesses he can’t complain too much. 

Stiles calls him on a Sunday morning and asks him to stop by his house whenever he’s able to and since Isaac has been doing nothing but trying to avoid Derek and his crazy uncle and all the talk about the Alpha pack that is apparently in town, he just throws on the first pair of jeans and clean shirt he can find and leaves his foster house to walk to Stiles’ place. 

There are noises coming from the house when Isaac rings the bell and Stiles opens the door laughing, rushing Isaac inside and to the kitchen where Scott is sitting on the counter, smiling, and there is food everywhere. As an explanation, Scott tells him that Stiles is making lunch for everyone and the sheriff is probably coming home and, hey, they should go to the living room and play video games since Stiles doesn’t like when people try to “help” him when he’s cooking, anyway. Air quotes included.

There is no coming out talk, but Scott and Stiles keep touching each other in a way that is definitely more intimate than Isaac’s ever seen, hands lingering with intent. Then they kiss. A peck on the lips when Stiles drops on the couch next to Scott and says the food is going to be ready in ten and, god, he hopes his dad will make it, it must suck have to eat reheated food every day. Isaac’s so happy for them he can’t find words, so he doesn’t say anything, he just smiles and keeps playing Uncharted. 

It’s apparently no news for the sheriff that his kid and Scott are together because he acts as normally as ever and it’s obvious that the relationship isn’t being treated like a secret. Scott and Stiles are all smiles during lunch, playful and careless in a way Isaac imagines they haven’t been able to be since Scott was turned. Everyone is so happy, so unworried, Isaac wants to stop time and live in this moment forever.

When they finish eating, Stiles gives Isaac a paper box with a dozen cupcakes in it and Isaac raises an eyebrow in question while Scott pouts and complains that he wants cupcakes too. Stiles just smirks and tells Isaac they’re a gift for being the sole reason Stiles got his first handjob. It makes Scott blush and hide his face on Stiles’ neck and the sheriff groans, says he doesn’t know what he did to deserve this and then promptly gets up and leaves the kitchen. Isaac can’t stop laughing. He gives Scott one of his cupcakes.

He spends his whole summer serving as a third wheel for Scott and Stiles and not being bothered at all by that. It isn’t really all the different hanging out with them as a couple as it was hanging out with them as just friends. They sit closer, maybe touch more, rest a hand on the other’s thighs or neck, but they aren’t really into PDA and they rarely even kiss when Isaac’s around.

By the end of the summer, Isaac’s not so foreign to having friends anymore. He still doesn’t know what to say when he sees Boyd and Erica and he definitely still doesn’t know how to handle Derek, but Stiles says that it’s normal and no one will ever know how to handle Derek until the guy loses at least half his baggage, and even if Isaac likes him, even if he wishes he could help, he can’t help anyone who doesn’t even want to be helped. 

But, well, he can try, Isaac managed to successfully bring a couple together without help from anyone, maybe he can find Derek a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or even a puppy. Maybe Derek can adopt a dog by himself, Isaac will even help him name it. Maybe everything is going to be all right, crazy Alpha pack in town or not. 

It’s his first day in junior year and Isaac is putting on his lacrosse uniform, happy to be able to be just number fourteen for a while. He can see Danny rolling his eyes at something Jackson’s saying and he can hear Stiles laughing at coach Finstock talking about Greenberg. Someone bumps his shoulder and he turns to see Scott smiling at him, already in his uniform, number eleven.

“Thank you.” Scott says, blushing, but looking straight into his eyes. Isaac ducks his head, averts his eyes, _what are friends for?_


End file.
